


To Sleep, Perchance to Dream (or not)

by multicoloredgypsy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nightmares, PTSD, Post The Great Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:50:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multicoloredgypsy/pseuds/multicoloredgypsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After not getting blown up at the pool, Sherlock keeps waking up to find John in his bed with his arms wrapped around him. It gets to be a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Sleep, Perchance to Dream (or not)

They don't get blown up.

Nobody gets shot, and maybe one day Sherlock might be able to look at John and not immediately think of red sniper lights dancing over his face. He knows already that it's going to be a problem when John breaks out his own puffy winter coat.

Until then, he already knows that its going to be a lot of side-stepping around the things that he doesn't have words for, a lot of holding his breath and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Who knows if it ever will, but they don't get blown up in the pool where Sherlock swam as a child, and John isn't actually a criminal mastermind, and they can walk out of the building on their own feet. It's enough.

Walking out feels anything but safe, feels like walking into hell. Sherlock thinks how easy it would be for Moriarty - Jim - to have surrounded the building with snipers, or put a land mine under the floor tiles. One glance at John, his eyes downcast and scanning the floor in front of him, and Sherlock can tell he's thinking the same thing.

Sherlock imagines him then as if he were in the army. It's only a flash, but he can see John dressed in fatigues, picking his way through the rubble of a blown-up building, aware of land mines that could be buried in the dirt and even more aware of how futile the pains he's taking to avoid them really are in the long run.

If there are any land mines now, nobody steps on them, and if there are snipers, they've been ordered to stand down, because Sherlock and John make it back to Baker Street alive and unharmed.

It's too easy, though, and Sherlock's brain is working itself raw trying to figure out what he could have missed. John makes a beeline to the kitchen, his legs struggling to support him. He braces himself against the counter, surveying the mess in front of him, and sucks a deep breath in through his teeth.

"Don't think I'll be sleeping tonight. Chinese?"

But Sherlock can't talk yet, doesn't trust his voice not to betray the fact that those first few seconds thinking John was Moriary felt like the ultimate betrayal. He didn't just think it, he believed it, and he doesn't know why they call it being stabbed in the back, because it feels like he's been stabbed in the heart by a white-hot rusty poker.

John's suggestion that they order takeaway sends Sherlock's stomach growling, but the adrenaline has left him in a rush, and he doesn't have enough energy to deal with all the feelings that come with being in the same room as his flatmate right now. Silently, he retreats to his bedroom and curls up in his bed. He hardly ever sleeps there, not when the couch is free. But the privacy of a closed door is what he needs right now. He doesn't even try to fall asleep, he just shuts his eyes and he's off.

 

Sherlock wakes to find someone's arms wrapped around him, a too-warm body pressed against his back, and John's voice in his ear: "You're alright, it's okay."

"Of course I'm alright," Sherlock says, fully alert. He has no idea what John is doing in his bed, holding him in a way that Sherlock guesses that a mother might hold a child, not like Sherlock's own mother ever has but he's come to learn that his was not the most normal of upbringings. He's seen people hold each other like this in television, on programs that John puts on in the afternoon as background noise for when he's blogging, 

There's a bit of intimacy there as well, two men sharing one bed, bodies pressed together in a way that Sherlock's never experienced either. It sets him on edge, to say the least. "Why wouldn't I be alright?"

"Don't worry," John whispers. "Go back to sleep."

And Sherlock, not feeling the pressing need to be awake just yet, goes back to sleep.

 

It doesn't happen again for another six days. In an effort to forget he ever even heard of a swimming pool before, Sherlock gets wrapped up in the kind of case that makes trivial the otherwise ordinary things like sleep and food that send John into a panic when he ignores these ordinary things, and then into a sulk, and then (after six days, one dead body, and one live one locked safely behind bars) back into Sherlock's bed.

He's got his chest pressed to Sherlock's back again - Sherlock can feel John's heartbeat through his thin sleep shirt, feel the vibrations of his voice, voice low, "You're safe, Sherlock. You're alright."

"Apparently," Sherlock agrees, perfectly aware of the fact already. The only thing he's in the dark about is what John is doing back here again, in his bed. John's right arm is wrapped around Sherlock's, his hand splayed open against Sherlock's sternum and applying an agreeable pressure. "Are you quite alright, John?"

What are you doing here?, he means, but it's all there in his voice. John is quite good at picking up on the things Sherlock means to say but never gives voice to so as not to state the obvious, and Sherlock finds it so tiresome to state the obvious.

Not so good in the small hours before dawn, though; John's answer is hardly of any use, just more of the same soothing whispers: "I'm fine, Sherlock. I'm here. It's alright."

He grits his teeth, rolls onto his back, and falls asleep before John can tell him to.

 

The first time had been weird, incredibly so, but Sherlock's used to weird. He had written the second time off as a mere coincidence. When it happens a third time, Sherlock decides it's high time he start investigating this phenomenon with a little more of his usual deduction skills.

"John," he says, snapping abruptly into wakefulness to find himself being spooned again.

"Yeah, Sherlock," John says, giving his arm a light squeeze. "I'm here."

"I know you're here," Sherlock says, lying perfectly still. "I'd love to know why."

John's hand finds its way from his arm to his face, stroking back his hair in a way that is both gentle and comforting. "It's alright now, go back to sleep."

Again, that same request. Go to sleep, go back to sleep. Don't worry.

"I'm not worried," Sherlock protests.

"I know, I know," John says absently, setting his hand back down on Sherlock's arm and rubbing up and down, lazy and calming... it's maddening. And then he keeps whispering things, telling Sherlock he's fine, calm down, it's alright, everything is fine, Sherlock, calm down. 

But Sherlock's already calm, so John's gentle stroking of his arm and his useless soothing words work in direct opposition to his state and infuriates him into pulling away from John's warm body and sitting up abruptly. John follows him. He always does. Even in bed, in the middle of the night, he follows Sherlock upright.

Sherlock does a quick assessment of him, looking for the usual tells that John had been dreaming of the desert again, only to find nothing. "Exactly what are you doing in my bed?"

"Calming you down," John says like it's the most obvious thing in the world and everyone else is an idiot for not seeing it. Sherlock imagines this must be how John feels, all the time, trying and failing to keep up with Sherlock's incredible brain.

"I'm perfectly calm," Sherlock, well, yells, his tone not really doing much to help prove his point. "I was calm until you thought I wasn't!"

"Sherlock, you were screaming. I'd hardly classify that as anywhere near calm."

"And I'd hardly classify the volume of my previous statement as anywhere near screaming," Sherlock snaps. "A shout, maybe, if you want, but even that is a reach. Certainly not screaming. Why have you stopped arguing your point?"

John has gone quiet. He's looking at Sherlock in that way he normally reserves for when Sherlock says something off-color or inhuman, the look he makes just before telling Sherlock to apologize to the woman who's now fighting back tears, or the man who's just abruptly excused himself from the crime scene.

"You really have no idea," he says, his voice going quiet and a little bit higher in pitch. It's his pity voice, his feeling bad for someone voice, paired with his sympathetic eyebrows drawn up. Sherlock gets this face sometimes, very rarely. It's never good.

So he flings the bedsheets off him, suddenly feeling too hot under the scrutiny of John's hardly-used face. "I realize," he says carefully, "that this is a momentous occasion, rarer than an eclipse, the part where I don't see what's right under my nose. I assure you that this is as strange for me as it is you, and infuriating and frustrating. So if we could just get this over with, John, just tell me, right now, what it is that I'm apparently too stupid to realize!"

"You were having a nightmare," John says.

"Really? How interesting," Sherlock says, feigning curiosity. "The interesting part being the fact that you're the one who has nightmares. I don't have any. I'd remember it if I did."

John doesn't say anything to contest the fact, doesn't try to deny the accusation, so Sherlock just keeps talking, working himself more and more into actual anger with nowhere else to direct it but at John. "You wake up screaming half the time and crying quietly the rest. You really should be muffling the sounds with a pillow; your hand doesn't do much in that area. Although you have no reason to worry about waking me - you already know we keep different hours."

"Sherlock, don't-" John starts to say, but Sherlock's glare stops him.

"I don't have nightmares," Sherlock says again, because there's no proof, and because he's lived more than enough of what other people might call nightmares firsthand to be haunted by anything in sleep. Even the most horrific cases, the most gruesome and inhumane and terrifying displays of the human condition never disturb Sherlock - they merely interest him. Sometimes fascinate. But never disturb and most certainly never terrify and plague with nightmares. "You can't lie to me, John, and you know it. If you're afraid to sleep in your own bed, you should have just said so. I hardly mind."

And then John shuts down. His whole face darkens, and he closes off in that way that Sherlock has never been able to understand, although he's come to realize that it's usually because of something he said. Since there's no one in bed with them, it's a pretty fair assumption this time, although Sherlock can't figure out what part of his speech had upset John.

Perhaps he'd embarrassed him by bringing up the fact that John still wakes up screaming and crying. But John shouldn't be embarrassed by this - he already knows that Sherlock knows, their flat isn't so big that Sherlock doesn't hear trying to control his shuddering breathing, harsh sobs and gasps poorly muffled, as he'd said, behind his hand.

 

 

Two days go by before John talks to Sherlock (acting as if their previous conversation had never happened) and another week before the subject of the nightmares comes up again.

John's mobile lands on the couch next to Sherlock, bouncing once on the cushion. Sherlock looks up to see John facing him and figures that he's thrown it at him. He picks up the now out-of-date model and snorts bemusedly.

"Need me to send a text for you?"

"No, I can send my own texts, thanks" John says, the sloppily tacked on afterthought of gratitude doing nothing to soften the bow of his retort. Sherlock files a reminder away in his mind palace to do something about that mean streak of his.

"There's a video setting on this mobile, you know," he continues, coming into the living room and sitting on the arm of his chair.

"Yes," Sherlock says, quickly accessing the only video file on the phone, "which I'm sure took you longer than you'll ever admit to figure out how to use. What am I looking at?"

"Just watch."

John seems much too eager. Sherlock senses a trap right away, but it's John, and John is not a criminal mastermind. He's just not. Jim had been speaking for him, had used him to get to Sherlock. This is nothing to worry about. He hits play.

The picture is too dark to see clearly, having obviously been taken at night. When Sherlock's eyes adjust, he can make out a body lying down, in bed. His bed, he can see from the headboard. It's him.

"John, no," he says, voice muffled with sleep. He's curled up on his side, but tossing around, from the shifting sound of sheets.

Then, and Sherlock thinks this must be some doctored video because this next part is impossible, the Sherlock in the video lets out a scream that crackles with static on the mobile's tiny speaker. "John, oh my god, you can't be dead, John, please! John!"

Sherlock turns off the video, not needing to see anymore. He already has an idea how the rest of the video goes. He doesn't need to look up to know that John is staring at him, waiting for him to admit defeat, to apologize for being stubborn, and tell John all about how he feels about all this.

But he doesn't feel anything. "So what?" he says, because he knows that if he doesn't say anything John will mistake his silence for a sulk and think he's upset, which he most certainly isn't. He tosses the phone back to John.

"So, there's your proof," John says. "You do have nightmares."

"You don't have any proof," Sherlock says, his voice hollow, still not looking up.

"Yes I do. I just showed you - Sherlock!" And then John is busy flipping through his mobile, trying to find the video. But he won't find it because Sherlock's deleted it.

"I don't have nightmares, John, because there's nothing, for me, to be afraid of!" You're not a criminal, he doesn't say. He doesn't say how scared he was because was is a past tense word, referring only to those few seconds when John came out of the changing stall and said Moriarty's words and made Sherlock believe him, and then those few other seconds when John opened his jacket and Sherlock saw the bomb vest, vest made out of bombs, and Sherlock thought he was going to lose him for sure.

But John didn't blow up, nor did he end up being Moriarty, and all that's over now so Sherlock has nothing to be afraid of.

"I'm not accusing you," John says, standing up, probably getting ready to come over and sit down with Sherlock, put his arms around him again. "I'm trying to help you."

"When have I ever needed help from anyone? What could you possibly do to help me?"

Sherlock gets his answer as soon as the words leave his mouth. John's shot a man for him. John's followed him on cases, offered him input, wrestled him into bed when he'd been too tired to do so himself, reminded him to shower and eat and change his clothes, and the list goes on.

But Sherlock doesn't want to hear it, so he gets to his feet, grabs his coat, and leaves Baker street as quick as his legs can carry him.

In a cab on the way to the new Scotland Yard, Sherlock reminds himself under his breath that there isn't anything to be afraid of, that they didn't blow up, and that everything was fine.

 

John's already asleep when Sherlock makes it back home, three nights later. Good thing he didn't wait up, then, that he'd forgotten about the other day. Sherlock had forgotten, had never even been upset about it in the first place, but he knows how upset John gets over things. So he gave him time, stayed away for a few days, slept in an abandoned house that some of his homeless network had been squatting in until the police chased everyone out earlier that night.

Sherlock goes into his bedroom only to change, emerging in his pajamas moments later and curling up on the couch. He hadn't turned on any of the lights when he came home, knowing his flat well enough to find his way in the dark, and he falls asleep with little effort.

And snaps awake to the sound of a scream.

"What-?"

A hand splayed flat on his chest keeps him from getting up. "It's okay, Sherlock. You're alright."

John, then.

"Somebody screamed," he protests, even as he feels the cold fingers of terror loosening their hold on him as he wakes up.

"You were screaming, yeah. But hush now, you're alright."

"Oh god, John," Sherlock says, coming back to himself all at once and feeling mortified. Of course his mind would betray him now, after he'd tried so hard to prove himself sane and strong and of sound mind, he has to wake up with John shushing him and telling him he's alright, yet again.

"No, it's okay. You're alright."

"I know I'm alright," Sherlock says, covering his face with a hand.

"I'm alright too," John says, and damn him for humiliating him like this, by being so patient with him when Sherlock doesn't even have the patience with himself.

"I don't have nightmares," he insists, holding onto the impossible hope that saying so will make it true.

"Of course you don't," John says, brushing his hair out of his face. "You're just a very violent sleep-talker, now shove over."

The couch is hardly wide enough for Sherlock to sleep on, nowhere near big enough to hold two grown men, but John lies down right behind him, pinning Sherlock's arm to his side by wrapping his own arm around him. His other hand just keeps brushing Sherlock's hair back.

So there, it's settled. They've come to an agreement. John, who did not blow up, who isn't a serial killer or any other kind of criminal even if he did kill a man who would have killed Sherlock, has stopped trying to convince Sherlock of an improbable weakness.

Sherlock doesn't have nightmares. Sherlock refuses to accept it, will never admit to such failings.

He does, however, have a flatmate willing to curl up next to him when his sleep is troubled. And also willing to kill for him, and follow him into danger without significant protest, and also make him meals and blog about him. It could be worse.

There, on the couch, Sherlock finally allows himself to feel glad that they didn't blow up.

**Author's Note:**

> I've found myself writing to post-TGG fics, one where they blow up, and one where they don't. This was obviously the one where they don't. heh.


End file.
